A critical examination of the category of "Polishness" - that is, the formation, redefinition, and performance of various kinds of Polish identities - from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives.Inspired by new research in the humanities and social sciences as well as recent scholarship on national identities, this volume offers a rigorous examination of the idea of Polishness. Offering a diversity of case studies and methodological-theoretical approaches, it demonstrates a profound connection between national and transnational processes and places the Polish case in a broader context. This broader context stretches from a larger Eastern European one, a usual frame of comparison, to the overseas immigrant communities. The authors, renowned scholars from Europe and the United States, thus demonstrate that an understanding of modern Polish identity means crossing not only historical but also geographical boundaries.Consequently, the narrative on Polish identity that unfolds in the volume is a personalized and multivocal one that presents the perspectives of a wide range of subjects: peasants, workers, migrants, ethnic and sexual minorities-that is, all those actors who have been absent in grand national narratives. As such, the examination of Polishness sheds light on the identity question more broadly, emphasizing the interplay of pluralizing and homogenizing tendencies, and fostering a reflection on national identity as encompassing both sameness and difference.

Introduction: Polishness. A Story of Sameness and DifferenceAgnieszka PasiekaPart One: Redefining Polishness1: The Birth of the "Polak-Katolik"Brian Porter-Szucs2: Vita Magistra Historiae? The Case of A. B.Pawel Bukowiec3: An Anti-ImperialCivilizingMission: ClaimingVolhynia for the Early Second RepublicKathryn Ciancia4: Suspicious Origins as a Category of Polish CultureIrena Grudzinska-Gross5: Redefining Polishness through JewishnessGeneviève ZubrzyckiPart Two: Identity in the Making6: Human Mobility and the Creation of a Transatlantic Polish CultureKeely Stauter-Halsted7: "Good Americans" and Polish Modern Identity Construction after World War IKrystyna Lipinska Illakowicz8: From "True Believers" to "Cultural Feminists": Polish Identity and Women's Emancipation in post-1945 and post-1989 PolandMagdalena Grabowska9: Labor, Gender, and Interethnic Relations among Polish-American Communities in Rural MassachusettsAgnieszka Pasieka10: Being European in Poland and Polish in Europe: Transnational Constructions of National IdentityMarysia GalbraithPart Three: Portraits and Performances11: Views of Polishness: Style and Representation in Local and National ExhibitionsMalgorzata Litwinowicz12: Plebeian, Populist, Post-Enlightenment-Mass Sarmatism and Its Political FormsPrzemyslaw Czaplinski13: The Polish Connection: Lithuanian Music and the Warsaw Autumn FestivalLisa Jakelski14: Performing Polishness Abroad: (Non-)Polish Actors and the Construction of (Trans)National Identities in European CinemaKris Van Heuckelom15: "Poles-Their Own Portraits" Revisited: Taking a Critical StandRyszard KoziolekAfterword: Polishness. A Time of Deconstruction, a Time of ReconstructionPawel RodakEditors and ContributorsIndex